This Winter Is Killing New York City’s Birds Too

Birds sit on a wall during a snow storm in New York, January 21, 2014. In New York, a storm alert was issue for noon (1700 GMT) Tuesday to 6:00 am (1100 GMT) Wednesday with as much as a foot (30 centimeters) forecast for the metropolitan region. AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel DunandPhoto: EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

The weather has been so harsh that New York City’s birds are freezing and starving and injuring themselves due to disorientation. “It has been crazy,” Cathy Horvath, a wildlife-rescue volunteer, tells the Daily News. “We’re getting calls about swans coming up to people begging for food and ducks crashing into pavement, thinking it was water.” (You think you’ve got it bad; at least you’re not so cold you’re running into walls.) Horvath and other wildlife rehabilitators say that they have been treating many more patients this year, and some don’t make it. “This has been a long winter and a cold winter,” said Sarah Aucoin, director of the Urban Park Rangers at the city parks department. “And now we are bumping into breeding season. We’re not sure what the impact willbe.”